Read Online Liars & Thieves by Stephen Coonts - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Stephen Coonts
Tags: Fiction, General, Suspense, Thrillers, Action & Adventure, Mystery & Detective, Espionage, Intelligence Officers, Virginia, Spy fiction; American, Massacres, Suspense stories; American
Ads: Link
tried the door. Locked. With a padlock.
The mind of the archivist began to work again. If he didn’t get shelter and warmth, he would die of exposure tonight.
There was a woodpile beside the cabin. He used a billet of wood as a hammer on the padlock. He ran splinters into his hand, but after an eternity of pounding the hasp tore loose from the wooden door.
Feeling his way around inside the cabin, he found a bed with blankets, one of which he wrapped around him. Further exploration revealed an iron stove in the middle of the single room. Fumbling in the dark, he found matches, newspapers, and wood.
Somehow he managed to get a fire going in the stove, then fed in wood until the stove would hold no more. As the stove crackled and popped and warmth spread in the darkness, Mikhail Goncharov pulled the blanket tightly around him and sank into the nearest chair.
He couldn’t sleep. The scenes ran back and forth through his mind — fire, shots, blood, his wife’s face frozen in death, faces from his past, the files, the fear … the terror!
***
Under the overcast the night became very dark. The rain stopped, finally. Occasionally cars and trucks drenched my windshield with road spray, so I kept busy fiddling with the wipers while I tried to figure out what in hell I should do next.
I didn’t like being in this predicament. Sure, before I got blackmailed into joining the CIA I spent a few years outwitting the law, but I was always meticulously prepared before I made my first move. I had never been a fugitive.
Funny how a man’s life goes. If my partner in that big diamond heist hadn’t got busted and finked on me, I might still be in the business. I will never forget the day that a CIA recruiter buttonholed me after class and suggested we have lunch in the student cafeteria. I was only a month away from graduating from Stanford Law School. She asked about my postgraduation plans, sounded so innocent. After I finished blowing air she remarked that a prosecution for stealing the Peabody diamond from the Museum of Natural History in Washington might give any law firm interested in me food for thought. Naturally, as the conversation progressed, the CIA became my number-one job choice.
Now I was legit as a postal clerk, right smack-dab in the middle of the great American middle class, accoutered with credit cards, debts, a savings account, and a green paycheck every month. Yet on this miserable wet July night, this loyal, paper-pushing government employee was dodging the law as if he had never been persuaded to add his name to the civil service payroll. Ah, me . . .
I didn’t have a map of northern Virginia in the car, so I stopped at a convenience store in Manassas and purchased one. Thirty minutes later I was cruising a subdivision in Burke, Virginia, looking for my car.
There it sat, red and dirty, in the driveway of Erlanger’s house.
I drove past and looked the neighborhood over. It was a newer suburb, with twisty streets with cutesy names that were all deadends and small two-story houses painted earth tones. Judging from the size of the decorator trees, the subdivision was perhaps three years old. Every house had a garage and driveway—no cars parked on the street. Lots of streetlights, fenced backyards for dogs and tots.
If the FBI was also onto Erlanger, they were here, somewhere, watching and waiting for me. Even if they hadn’t yet learned that she had survived the massacre that morning, if they had the telephone line to the lock shop tapped, they were here or on their way.
I didn’t see anyone in any of the cars.
They might be waiting in Erlanger’s house.
Only one way to find out. I parked in her driveway beside my car. The MP-5 was just visible behind the seat of the old Mercedes. The driver’s door was locked.
But not the passenger door!
The electric door lock was broken, had been for months—the passenger door had to be locked manually. Obviously Erlanger hadn’t checked the passenger door
The mind of the archivist began to work again. If he didn’t get shelter and warmth, he would die of exposure tonight.
There was a woodpile beside the cabin. He used a billet of wood as a hammer on the padlock. He ran splinters into his hand, but after an eternity of pounding the hasp tore loose from the wooden door.
Feeling his way around inside the cabin, he found a bed with blankets, one of which he wrapped around him. Further exploration revealed an iron stove in the middle of the single room. Fumbling in the dark, he found matches, newspapers, and wood.
Somehow he managed to get a fire going in the stove, then fed in wood until the stove would hold no more. As the stove crackled and popped and warmth spread in the darkness, Mikhail Goncharov pulled the blanket tightly around him and sank into the nearest chair.
He couldn’t sleep. The scenes ran back and forth through his mind — fire, shots, blood, his wife’s face frozen in death, faces from his past, the files, the fear … the terror!
***
Under the overcast the night became very dark. The rain stopped, finally. Occasionally cars and trucks drenched my windshield with road spray, so I kept busy fiddling with the wipers while I tried to figure out what in hell I should do next.
I didn’t like being in this predicament. Sure, before I got blackmailed into joining the CIA I spent a few years outwitting the law, but I was always meticulously prepared before I made my first move. I had never been a fugitive.
Funny how a man’s life goes. If my partner in that big diamond heist hadn’t got busted and finked on me, I might still be in the business. I will never forget the day that a CIA recruiter buttonholed me after class and suggested we have lunch in the student cafeteria. I was only a month away from graduating from Stanford Law School. She asked about my postgraduation plans, sounded so innocent. After I finished blowing air she remarked that a prosecution for stealing the Peabody diamond from the Museum of Natural History in Washington might give any law firm interested in me food for thought. Naturally, as the conversation progressed, the CIA became my number-one job choice.
Now I was legit as a postal clerk, right smack-dab in the middle of the great American middle class, accoutered with credit cards, debts, a savings account, and a green paycheck every month. Yet on this miserable wet July night, this loyal, paper-pushing government employee was dodging the law as if he had never been persuaded to add his name to the civil service payroll. Ah, me . . .
I didn’t have a map of northern Virginia in the car, so I stopped at a convenience store in Manassas and purchased one. Thirty minutes later I was cruising a subdivision in Burke, Virginia, looking for my car.
There it sat, red and dirty, in the driveway of Erlanger’s house.
I drove past and looked the neighborhood over. It was a newer suburb, with twisty streets with cutesy names that were all deadends and small two-story houses painted earth tones. Judging from the size of the decorator trees, the subdivision was perhaps three years old. Every house had a garage and driveway—no cars parked on the street. Lots of streetlights, fenced backyards for dogs and tots.
If the FBI was also onto Erlanger, they were here, somewhere, watching and waiting for me. Even if they hadn’t yet learned that she had survived the massacre that morning, if they had the telephone line to the lock shop tapped, they were here or on their way.
I didn’t see anyone in any of the cars.
They might be waiting in Erlanger’s house.
Only one way to find out. I parked in her driveway beside my car. The MP-5 was just visible behind the seat of the old Mercedes. The driver’s door was locked.
But not the passenger door!
The electric door lock was broken, had been for months—the passenger door had to be locked manually. Obviously Erlanger hadn’t checked the passenger door
Similar Books
